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What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

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Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#301

Post by jdietrich »

brownbat wrote: post #244
jdietrich wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Basically, pink slime is highly processed leavings of beef that cannot be used except by putting it through more or less a blender and a chemistry lab. After butchering a carcass, you're left with a lot of fatty trimmings with small amounts of meat attached that are uneconomical to recover by hand. If you gently heat the fat trimmings and spin them in a centrifuge, you cleanly separate the lean meat from the fat. Th…

Really appreciate the calm, thoughtful, and informed devil's advocate perspective, we need more of that for meaningful discussions. > We really need to be talking about the use of antibiotics as a growth promoter I don't have fully formed views on this so I'm curious... Are your concerns about antibiotics based on a fear of reduced effectiveness of human medicines? A cursory search makes it look like significant chun…

>Are your concerns about antibiotics based on a fear of reduced effectiveness of human medicines?

Yes. Over 60% of the antibiotics given to livestock are medically important to humans. There's clear evidence that this is translating into increased antibiotic-resistant infections in both livestock and humans. The FDA have implemented the Veterinary Feed Directive, but these regulations are light-touch compared to the EU and have some fairly glaring loopholes.

There's a legitimate debate about the use of ionophores, but medically important antibiotics are all too often used as a sticking-plaster to ameliorate the effects of poor animal husbandry. If you're keeping huge numbers of animals in cramped and unsanitary conditions, you should really fix that issue before you start routinely dumping lincomycin or penicillin into feed. The use of medically important antibiotics purely for the purposes of growth promotion is both widespread and unjustifiable.

The problem is inarguably worse in the developing world (particularly Asia) but the US should really be a leader rather than a follower on this issue. The WHO have issued clear guidelines on preventing antibiotic resistance in agriculture, but the FDA have been dragging their heels on actually implementing those guidelines in an effective manner.

Other countries (particularly the EU) have implemented relatively strict controls with no real impact on animal welfare and fairly marginal economic impact. Even if you doubt the strength of the evidence, the risk/reward calculus strongly points towards heavy restrictions on the use of medically important antibiotics in livestock; slightly cheaper meat is a pretty poor upside compared to the risk of an antibiotic-resistant epidemic.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/258970/9789...

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#302

Post by wolco »

nate_meurer wrote: post #288
wolco wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bacteria in your body produce waste ammonia, hydrogen, methaine. Your body using the detoxication channels available to remove them. If the body is unable to you get sick. Throwing in more ammonia will cause more stress on these pathways. Bodies can only handle so much we try to counteract these with things to detoxify like rest, exercise, other foods, etc. Eat pink slime through your 20s might be okay the older…

I don't mean to insult you, so let me apologize if this sounds mean, but I can tell you're completely unfamiliar with basic human physiology. What you're saying makes no sense. Ammonia is your body's way of getting rid of nitrogen, which comes from dietary protein. In general, an adult's body must dispose of as much nitrogen as they consume. This makes sense if you think about it, because humans don't grow forever. Y…

Ammonia ends up being converted into urea which is then excreted in the urine. That process happens in the liver and the older you are the slower the urea cycle. While an athlete may be able to handle additional pink meat I would question why a high performing athlete would.

The trace amounts you speak of are the maximum amounts before the taste starts to change.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#303

Post by hndamien »

jdietrich wrote: post #131
joe_the_user wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After butchering a carcass, you're left with a lot of fatty trimmings with small amounts of meat attached that are uneconomical to recover by hand. If you gently heat the fat trimmings and spin them in a centrifuge, you cleanly separate the lean meat from the fat. That process weakens the cell walls of the muscle fibres, which increases the risk of bacterial growth; to kill the bacteria, ammonium hydroxide gas is use…

>That's a fine sell. Now sell me on, "this is so OK that we should have a statutory right not to ever mention this fact. Food production is really, really complex. If an organic burrito was labelled with every process involved in its production, it would come with a label the size of a telephone directory. Over-labelling is just as problematic as under-labelling, as we have seen with Prop 65; adding more words to a l…

You could fit that telephone directory in a link from a QR code, and at least one person would read it when it mattered. Individuals don't read privacy policies, but usually one person will.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#304

Post by captainbland »

burfog wrote: post #280
captainbland wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah although calling it 'slime' is basically just trying to bring about associations with, for instance, rotting meat or vegetables (which often end up with a slimy texture) for the sake of shocking people and bringing in an audience of predominantly more well off people who "would never eat that ". So rather than give it a name which is deliberately off-putting it's probably better to give it something vaguely neut…

People eat okra, escargot (snails), and natto. All of those have slime. The name "pink slime" isn't from ABC. It's from an FDA employee who got to examine the stuff.

Regardless, we wrap literally everything else in shiny marketing nonsense. Using it to get people to eat the entire edible part of the animal rather than wasting it is kind of a win from an environmental POV. I mean arguably it'd be better if we just stopped eating meat, but that doesn't seem like it'll happen any time soon.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#305

Post by nate_meurer »

wolco wrote: post #302
nate_meurer wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to insult you, so let me apologize if this sounds mean, but I can tell you're completely unfamiliar with basic human physiology. What you're saying makes no sense. Ammonia is your body's way of getting rid of nitrogen, which comes from dietary protein. In general, an adult's body must dispose of as much nitrogen as they consume. This makes sense if you think about it, because humans don't grow forever. Y…

Ammonia ends up being converted into urea which is then excreted in the urine. That process happens in the liver and the older you are the slower the urea cycle. While an athlete may be able to handle additional pink meat I would question why a high performing athlete would. The trace amounts you speak of are the maximum amounts before the taste starts to change.

> That process happens in the liver and the older you are the slower the urea cycle.

Not exactly. As I said earlier, renal function degrades slowly in old age. But that has no bearing on the pink slime issue, because normal nitrogen clearance capacity is orders of magnitude greater than dietary ammonia consumption, even in the elderly.

> While an athlete may be able to handle additional pink meat I would question why a high performing athlete would.

No, nitrogen clearance has nothing to do with athleticism or fitness level. All healthy adults can handle high protein diets. Old, young, fit or not; if you don't have impaired renal function or some kind of genetic metabolic disorder, your body can and does safely process hundreds or thousands of times more ammonia than what you eat in your food.

> The trace amounts you speak of are the maximum amounts before the taste starts to change.

No, those are food safety limits set by the FDA. [EDIT: nope, actually those are just some random tested ammonia levels. As a GRAS additive, the FDA actually doesn't directly limit ammonia content of foods or cosmetics. That's how safe it is.]

Look, I'm not telling you to eat pink slime. I certainly won't eat it. But it appears that your opinions are fixed in defiance of logic or evidence. I really think you'd be better off with some more basic knowledge, and maybe a little more willingness to learn.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#306

Post by mbrodersen »

jakobegger wrote: post #183
tptacek wrote: post #3

Why is this supposed to upset me? If we're going to keep eating animals (and that sure is my plan), we shouldn't give ourselves the luxury of getting squicked out over using the whole animal. If you're picky about what's in your ground beef, find a butcher you trust, or grind your own.

I recently saw that they now offer ground beef with less fat at our local supermarket. I assumed that they just put less of the fatty bits inside. Now, I don't live in the US, and I don't know what regulations in Europe say about ground beef, but it does make me hesitate: I absolutely wouldn't have bought the meat if I knew they added pink slime to it to make it less fatty. I'd just buy the fatty ground beef instead.…

Europe (and Australia) have much higher food standards than the US.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#308

Post by geofft »

joe_the_user wrote: post #128
jdietrich wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Basically, pink slime is highly processed leavings of beef that cannot be used except by putting it through more or less a blender and a chemistry lab. After butchering a carcass, you're left with a lot of fatty trimmings with small amounts of meat attached that are uneconomical to recover by hand. If you gently heat the fat trimmings and spin them in a centrifuge, you cleanly separate the lean meat from the fat. Th…

After butchering a carcass, you're left with a lot of fatty trimmings with small amounts of meat attached that are uneconomical to recover by hand. If you gently heat the fat trimmings and spin them in a centrifuge, you cleanly separate the lean meat from the fat. That process weakens the cell walls of the muscle fibres, which increases the risk of bacterial growth; to kill the bacteria, ammonium hydroxide gas is use…

"Pink slime" is not a useful term: "slime" doesn't convey anything concrete and "pink" stops being accurate when it's cooked.

Your argument about a statutory right not to mention things confuses me. Isn't that generally true of food production? You don't sell "eggs from caged, unhappy chickens who live their brief miserable lives in their own poop," you sell "eggs," and perhaps "cage-free eggs." You don't sell "ground beef from a cow that was stun-gunned and then sliced apart while potentially still conscious," you buy "ground beef," or perhaps ground beef with a kosher or halal slaughtering certification.

If your dispute is with the word "ground," will you be happy to call it just "beef"? It's not anything that wouldn't be in an unprocessed cut of meat from the butcher, and I'd certainly expect that to be called "beef" too.

(A note on my motivation: As a customer I worry my prices went up when fast food restaurants started avoiding "pink slime" for FUD reasons, without measurably improving the quality, taste, healthiness, or truthfulness of my burgers.)

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#309

Post by longhairedhippy »

mbrodersen wrote: post #307

A friend of mine (Seattle/US) was blown away by the quality of beef here in Australia compared with the US. That is what higher food standards give you.

As a counter-anecdote, my friend from Australia was blown away at the quality of beef in the US. I'm not saying either person is right or wrong, however it does seem to be somewhat subjective.

Re: What ABC called "pink slime," USDA now says can be labeled "ground beef"

#310

Post by wolco »

nate_meurer wrote: post #305
wolco wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ammonia ends up being converted into urea which is then excreted in the urine. That process happens in the liver and the older you are the slower the urea cycle. While an athlete may be able to handle additional pink meat I would question why a high performing athlete would. The trace amounts you speak of are the maximum amounts before the taste starts to change.

> That process happens in the liver and the older you are the slower the urea cycle. Not exactly. As I said earlier, renal function degrades slowly in old age. But that has no bearing on the pink slime issue, because normal nitrogen clearance capacity is orders of magnitude greater than dietary ammonia consumption, even in the elderly. > While an athlete may be able to handle additional pink meat I would question why…

You are making the case that eating pink slime and consuming ammonia is safe and a welcome thing because the FDA doesn't test for ammonia in food. You are also saying that our ability to detoxify doesn't change with age or fitness level.

Each message you try to put down the other person to change the discussion into a personality based discussion. Personal attacks are a sign of weakness in your position. Using personality doesn't make your position stronger. You'll labeled yourself as an open minded non-meat eating person educated in FDA testing and human anatomy. That's a great profile but let's get back to the facts.

You are arguing that ammonia in food at any level is okay and wouldn't put additional stress on the detoxification process because the fda doesn't test for this?

The FDA does test this in 1974. Ammonium hydroxide has been tested. They have deemed it safe at normal food levels because it is part of the normal human process. That position while technically correct doesn't take into account all of the other stresses including age as factors that slow down these processes. What do you think would happen if you went on a 30 day pink meat challenge?

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